Jetlag hasn??t troubled us overly this year, but on this hot Wednesday morning in Perth we found ourselves fairly and squarely in The Twilight Zone. As usual Bart and me ended up in bed together; Mike had his own suite upstairs at Chateau Stokes, of course. Both The Gaffer and I started to make movements towards our packs, to get suited up suitably for the day ahead. Pyjamas off, golf shirts and shorts on. Only was something wasn??t quite right. I had a Matrix Moment.
Looking back at Bartos I asked him why we??d got up; hard the alarm actually gone off? He looked at his watch and saw it was 6.20am ?? the iPhone wasn??t scheduled to disturb our coma until 0800 hours. Ha! We??d obviously just taken it as given from the other??s movements that It Was Time To Rise. Back to bed then... Goldy burst through our door some half an hour later, and found us dozing away fully (golf) clothed. He too thought we were running late, and that it must be time to get up. I explained what had happened, and that he too had got himself confused. So y??er man buzzed off and we all snatched a crucial extra hour of shut eye. Much drool found its way onto my pillow (sorry Mrs. Stokes!).
Over breakfast with Ned & Georgia we weren??t much chat, but did our best. Each of us looked worse than the other ?? like we??d been on a 72 hour bender in Vegas and not held back one bit. How encouraging it was though that I summoned the coordination to get the cornflakes from the bowl into my mouth. Without falling asleep while the spoon was half way through its journey north.
Today??s golf was not your ordinary affair either. Sam Hartrick a chief champ boss captain skipper from the Aussie PGA ?? who??d helped us out with a game or two earlier in the year around Melbourne ?? dropped us a note a few days back. Want to play in the Australian Seniors Open Pro Am at Royal Perth on Thursday lads? Why not... ??Fresh? after a 3am landing we found ourselves at the golf club around 8 hours later. There we met Sam in person for the first time; had a chat with Channel 10 for a news piece; and spotted a few legends of the game on the putting green (Lyle, Torrance, Woosie, Chook Fowler, Terry Giles, etc). Oh, and it was 38 degrees Celsius.
Baker Finch was on the microphone inside talking to a gathering of adoring lady fans. Granted, for an Australian, he has a rather endearing brogue. When he was hitting balls on the range next to me some 15 minutes later though I didn??t feel the need to tell him so. (Pardon me: I should say, when I was hitting balls next to him...). Nor did I ask him about his careless misplacement of The Plot after the heights of his success. No folks I just watched with interest and an ounce or two of admiration as he pelted a few iron shots down the way.
Unusually Michael and me were split up ?? which both of us with the best of intentions would say made for a nice change. I was teamed up with Terry Giles ?? West Australian farmer turned legend of golf ?? and a couple of tremendous humans named Tim and Keith I can only assume by their respective parents. Tim being a sales guy for Avis Car Rentals (a sponsor) and Keith being a Wakefielder who has made his home in Queenstown of all places. Terry also had a formiddable caddy in the form of Val, a member at Royal Perth and from what I could gather a very competent golfer more or less of his vintage. In typical ??Strayan fashion he flirted the whole way around with Val by showering her with false abuse. Funny creatures these ??Strayans.
In the heat we did the best we could. Which didn??t happen to be that good. I too was having a good old tussle with the 626 million flies that had found their way from the desert to Royal Perth courtesy of the hot East Wind. Giving it the Perth Wave an?? aw that. My new friends seemed to be amused by my epic struggle ?? noting that this was a pretty mild day on the fly front ?? but I took no notice of their ridicule and concentrated on the battle at hand. Apparently these particular flies are especially fond of moisture too (go figure), so they go straight for moist areas like your mouth and eyes. Excellent.
The course itself was tighter than most Wellington law clerks, which I can assure you is very tight indeed. Having just spent a week in the deserts of Dubai and Abu Dhabi ?? where there are no trees ?? this was something of a shock. Mediocre shots were punished more punitively than very poor ones, in the sense that going a fairway either side of the correct one wasn??t necessarily the end of the world. It was all academic though because we played an Irish Stableford (take the best tee shot of the bunch and play out from there, taking the two best scores each hole). While Tim, Keith and I peppered the gums Terry would step up and deliver another gun barrel straight blow. He even appeared bored by his straightness, almost as if he longed to hit an errant shot. Either that or in his head he was cursing at having been paired with such a thicket of talentless nitwits. It takes a while to gauge Terry I found, but after a while (i.e. once you feel comfortable enough to start slagging him off) he lowers his guard. When he laughed at a shanked 9 iron I hit on one of the par 3s I knew we were friends...
Ned very kindly walked around the course and offered words of encouragement (it would have been hard for him to offer words of congratulations...). Amazingly he got sick of watching us play after a hole or two, and instead chose instead to watch hackers like Woosnam and Torrance embarrass themselves. Word is Woosie was looking good. But the answer is Melville...Alfie Melville, of course.
After a delightful few hours in the company of my new friends I found myself under the comforting shade of the clubhouse deck. Cold beer and deli snacks were being served up to an ever growing contingent of sun battered golfers. We chatted some more; surveyed the talent; and managed to escape before the dreaded prizegiving and accompanying speeches got under way. Result.
One big thank you must to go Sammy Hartrick and Royal Perth for allowing us the privilege of lowering the tone at the Pro Am. Ditto to Ned for being good enough to, well, feed us, house us, ferry us around, and not laugh at our golf. And a personal thank you to my playing partners for being such good company despite my jetlagged state of consciousness. ??Twas indeed a grand (albeit blurry) episode of puregolf2010.
Georgia then made the best cheesecake ever made, which we demolished without hesitation out on the deck under the Fremantle evening sun. Not bad ay?
JP
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Chisholm Park
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